March 21, 2011

Tuesday and Wednesday of last week we taught our two favorite people a first discussion and then found four new people to teach. Also last week Bishop Morgan (part of the FM group) came out to fix our Branch’s satellite. It hasn’t worked since our arrival and we’ve kept it at the top of our weekly letters to our mission president, hoping to get it calibrated before April’s general conference. On Thursday we sent the following message to our mission president:

   Thanks, President! The satellite is working and we look forward to

   viewing conference with the members. Bishop Morgan (Anchorage FM group) is

   in the shadowed left side of the photo. Three large priesthood brethren

   helped maneuver the satellite dish to the new connection. All is beautiful

   in Dutch Harbor!

To which President Dance replied: Very Exciting...and just in time for General Conference. How perfect!

Friday was a banner day for finding and teaching people. This island is what the locals call “a working island” and no one makes excuses for missing meetings because working is the number one priority. The more hours you work, the more overtime you’re paid, and that’s the goal. So it was a small miracle that we were able to find and share a message with 14 people. At one juncture we were going to turn left and we felt we should turn right even though we had nothing to turn right for. Because of that turn a chain-reaction of small events followed, allowing us to meet with almost everyone on our list, and a couple of people that we’ve added to our list since.

On Saturday the winds returned. We’ve enjoyed several weeks of outstanding weather – sunshine and 45 to 50 degrees. Saturday’s storm began small and built to 69 mph by the time we left for our service project at the high school at 5 p.m. We finished up around 8 p.m. and the winds were in their glory – over 100 mph (the high school has an illuminated gauge). As we were driving homeward we noticed the branch president’s car behind us. Our satellite dish was gone. Here’s our email to our mission president:

   Winds exceeded 100 mph today. As you can see by the attached picture, our
   satellite dish is all over the neighborhood and up yonder mountain. It blew
   away when we were at an appointment and the neighbors called President
   Clark, who was behind us when we were driving home.

Here’s his reply: Oh dear, the picture tells a thousand painful words. Now we don't just have a dish that is not stabilized and callebrated...we don't even have a dish.

The danger to islanders isn’t the wind; it’s what the wind carries. Richard and the branch president worked to tie down the remaining parts of the dish. Our police officer member spent Saturday night trying to hold a roof onto a family’s home but eventually lost the battle and the family had to find rooms at the hotel. A couple containers blew over (a container is like one of those long boxes on the back of a semi) and we could see boards and metal roof pieces flying up the mountain.

The winds impacted church attendance Sunday – 27 faithful souls came.

We’ve been sending up prayers for our Japanese brothers and sisters. If we didn’t have such a strong testimony about the power of prayer we would say we are not doing enough. If we do it right, appealing to the God of our entire universe, who created all things and controls the elements, is the single most powerful thing we can do. We humbly ask His protective blessings to be upon each of you.

We love you so much.

Richard and Linda, Mom and Dad, Papa and Nanny

March 14, 2011 - Bush Branch, YW, FHE and Library Project

We just returned from helping a branch family hold their second family home evening. It’s been a great day, with people jumping into our path that we needed to see. Big blessings!

Bless the people in Japan who suffer from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. We hope and pray you and your loved ones are all right. We especially pray for The Ralph and Yoko Page family who live near the reactor.

Earthquakes are common here in the Aleutian, but before Friday’s quake we didn’t have an emergency kit. Saturday we put everything into a suitcase that we’d need if we had to head for high ground. If we ever need to actually depend on it for 72 full hours we’ll likely discover essentials missing but it gives us peace to know we won’t have to try to gather things together in an emergency – just grab the suitcase and water jug, jump into the truck, and head uphill.

We’ve spent more time telling you about the Dutch Harbor Branch than our Bush Branch, in which we also serve as full-time missionaries. Here are a couple of glimpses into our Bush Branch …

At 8 a.m. Sunday we called into the telecom center, punched in our access code and joined the PEC meeting. “Who just joined us,” asks the President Swenson. “Ok, we can go ahead and have our PEC. We need to send each of you notices of the stake training on the 24th.” Several minutes are spent gathering essential contact information, i.e., “Should we use the FrozenRachel or TeacherMum email?”
Then home teaching is discussed in terms of how many snow machine miles were involved with getting to members. Apparently one was 100 miles round trip from the nearest road, and when they arrived at the lodge of the part-member household (husband and a couple of the kids are not members), they found a picture of Christ above the bar and the Articles of Faith posted in the small restaurant. The home teachers sat in the restaurant and the wife/mother brought them snacks. Other visitors arrived via snow machine and also sat nearby and asked the wife/mother about the Articles of Faith, to which she responded. The conversation continued, with the visitors mentioning different people they knew that were LDS. As the reports were given we marveled at how quietly some people live the gospel.

We have four media referrals in the Bush Branch in places like Toksook and Sleetmute. Our biggest challenge is communication. We only have the telephone, which is often unclear.

Dutch Harbor branch had its first YW activity. The Primary had a Faith in God activity and I helped a couple of the girls make prayer pillows. I combined the lesson with their “heavenly royal heritage” and had a princess “tea” party and told them that, with their prayer pillows, their princess knees need never touch the floor. They made pom-poms and decorated the pillow’s corners. The following week they took their prayer pillows on a sleep-over to a non-member’s party, talked about their princess knees, and consequently we’ve been answering some questions.

We have also had opportunities to discuss our mission with city officials, which was heart-warming. Unalaska has no prejudices as far as we can determine and we enjoy the open-minded attitudes.

We thought we’d place some religious books and DVD’s in the library, which was well-received by the city and library, but they needed our media information registered for their system. We asked our mission president how we could get our materials registered for the library’s system, he passed our question along, and we soon discovered that the church has an entire department dedicated to placing materials in libraries. Beautiful!

Richard was "Props Manager" for the city's Cat in the Hat play on Dr. Seuss's birthday. Keep in mind that this is an island with limited resources, but with plenty of creativity he pulled off miracles. See photos below...

Hours of confetti-making

Green eggs and ham for everyone...

And tons of fun!

We love you. Stay safe.

Richard and Linda. Mom and Dad. Pop and Nanny.